RevOps Co-op Weekly #63 - RevOps Through the Lens of a Former SDR
We chatted with Seb van Heyningen in our latest Slack AMA about how to make your CRM work for your sales process, modern demand gen, and more.
RevOps Co-op provides resources, content and community for those who ❤️ revenue operations. This weekly newsletter features collected tweets, posts and thoughts on a variety of RevOps topics. We also have a private Slack community with > 3,400 RevOps pro’s from companies like Slack, Lyft, Clari, Miro and more 👉🏻 click here to join.
📣 COMMUNITY ANNOUNCEMENT! 📣
The RevOps Co-op welcomes RevPartners as a community partner to help our members with RevOps Strategy, HubSpot CRM, and Inbound Marketing!
Look out for their support in the community and reach out to them in their areas of expertise.
🥳 EXCLUSIVE CLUB DEAL: All members of the RevOps Co-op get free HubSpot Sales Audit + Live Session with Matt Bolian! Check the community-announcements channel in Slack to learn more 😉.
RevOps through the Lense of a Former SDR
We chatted with RevOps Co-op Content Strategist and President of Central Metric, a RevOps Consultancy, Seb van Heyningen, and will be covering:
1. How to make your CRM work for your sales process, not the other way around
2. Modern Demand Gen: How to generate leads without hiring a bunch of SDRs and hoping for the best
3. How to build the RevOps function internally and why it's important, and
4. Why RevOps is an Executive Function
A little more background on Seb:
Seb has worked in Sales since his first SDR position in 2014. A self-titled "hustler", he's completed tens of thousands of cold calls and generated millions of dollars in revenue for various SaaS companies. His experience as a consultant is mostly informed from that time.
Now a RevOps consultant, he has a passion for efficiency and firmly believes that RevOps is an Executive Function.
His firm focuses on Improving processes and using tech to help us all work smarter. It is his mission to make sure our revenue teams of people, process, and technology is working in sync and helping each other succeed.
He's an "ideas" guy that loves to talk strategy, but can also roll up his sleeves and do the work. He's also a published writer and a working DJ open to serious inquiries. His life goals are to win the Super Bowl as the owner of an NFL team and become the world's most famous Un-Billionaire.
Interviewing is Briana Yarborough, RevOps Leader at ASAPP.
Briana Yarborough
Welcome, Seb! Before we get into the serious topic of all things RevOps, what's been your favorite travel destination; and what outstanding destination still awaits on your bucket list?
I also heard through the grapevine that you are traveling now, just where might you be?
Seb van Heyningen
Hi! 👋 😊 - I am currently juggling my many OOO messages in beautiful Montego Bay, Jamaica.
Briana Yarborough
That is phenomenal! All-inclusive, I hope!
Seb van Heyningen
It sure is! My wristband has replaced my wallet for the week 😂 - My favorite destination so far in the US has been Seattle. But I was very lucky. Was there for 5 straight days and it was sunny every one of them. Outside of the US, Thailand is a personal favorite! My grandfather lives there and I visited a few years back. Amazing place.
As for ones I haven't made it to yet. It is a dream of mine to spend at least a month in the continent of Australia.
Briana Yarborough
I love a good All-inclusive and I am a HUGE lover of Asia. Phuket & Bangkok were certainly in my top 3 travel destinations along with Tokyo, Japan! Australia also seems beautiful, and is on my travel list!
I'm also quite interested in how you made the pivot to consulting, what drove that decision for you?
Seb van Heyningen
Ah! Well, I will be asking you for Phuket tips as I am going to be spending Christmas and New Years there with that side of my family (we're Dutch, not Thai. But my Grandfather picked Thailand as his home about 10 years ago).
Briana Yarborough
I'm incredibly jealous, and happy to give you my full rundown - I did a ton of research for that trip and my itinerary was jam-packed!
1st tip: Take me with you... 😊
LOL!
Seb van Heyningen
The pivot to consulting was something I always felt was in my future. When I quit my first SDR job, I told my Manager that was where I was headed. Years later, here I am! I think it came partly from the fact that I was a great individual salesperson, but the anxiety kept getting to me. I was still very interested in sales / revenue generation, but my soul couldn't take another quota carrying position. I poured myself into the theoretical and leadership side of this world instead.
Also, I was that SDR that when offered an AE position, I didn't see myself there. This was almost 10 years ago, mind you. But I didn't fit in with that culture, that archetype. I always wanted to go into management / ops instead. Consulting was a great way to both broaden my skill set and still stay on the revenue team.
Briana Yarborough
Makes complete sense and I love that every journey to RevOps is so seemingly different! We all have such incredible value-add based on our lived experiences!
Seb van Heyningen
Indeed! And it helps when we have to work with multiple teams. Our diverse set of experiences is invaluable.
Briana Yarborough
We will have to spend some time on diversity, and fitting the mold in a future session! This is a major topic that I think many would find illuminating!
Pivoting a bit into Sales Process & CRM, As we all know, each business is different, so when you’re designing a sales process and the infrastructure of your CRM, what are the key levers that support you in measuring the success of the workflows & designs that you’ve established?
Seb van Heyningen
We sure do! And I am so, so, SO refreshed to see many companies out there trying to increase diversity in these spaces (Launchsource, re:work, Flockjay, Sales for the Culture, etc).
That’s a great question!! From a technical standpoint, your CRM is the best place to look. We have a rule here at Central Metric in which we always build an accompanying report alongside any built automations. For example: If we have an automation assigning inbound leads to reps....you better believe we have a dashboard updating in real-time telling the management team exactly where each new Lead was assigned. The workflow takes place in the CRM, so the reporting should, too!
Aside from that, talk to your people. Ask them if this workflow is making their job easier or harder. That anecdotal information is often missed, leading to automations that benefit no one, or only one department.
Lastly, success = revenue in this world. If your automations and workflows aren't helping people bring in more revenue...they aren't working.
Anastasiia
Hi 👋, if you could give one piece of advice to a company that's only just starting to build inbound channels, what would it be? (Asking for a friend, obviously.)
Seb van Heyningen
Hey Anastasiia!! I would say that the key is to make the actions you want as easy as possible for your prospects to do. Cut your inbound request forms to 1-3 fields at the most, add an inbound chat bot, maybe even stop gating your content. You want people to have a good experience so that they get value and come back.
I have so many more, too! Run your inbound strategy by one of your current clients to see if they'd be hooked. Map out the journey from inquiry to opportunity so it is clear. Iterate on your content and have someone own the function. The list goes on and on 😊.
Anastasiia
Great advice, thanks!
Briana Yarborough
Really love that feedback and I've done it before but am also currently working to build this structure at my current organization.. It's the thrill of the game and only Ops mindsets hold the key to the castle! Fantastic advice!
Seb van Heyningen
Yes!! I love to see it. More and more companies are embracing Inbound not just as a helpful boost to outbound, but as a core part of their revenue generating strategy. We've moved past the 100s of blind cold calls phase of building a business.
Briana Yarborough
Your last reply was a great segue into my last question!
What would be your approach to managing modern demand generation for a B2B enterprise SaaS organization without any SDRs and only full cycle AEs and technology on your side?
Seb van Heyningen
Ha! Some sales leaders are actually anti-SDR. Scott Leese comes to mind. Idk how I feel about this since my whole career was built from the SDR-function...but we don't need to assembly-line our sales process.
My advice for modern demand gen B2B enterprise orgs is to empower your reps to be experts in their field.
Their word needs to be trusted BEFORE anyone takes the meeting. They need to meet their prospects on their level of understanding and be seen as trusted advisors rather than software slingers.
A rule of thumb I try to install in any modern demand gen team: Your outreach has to communicate value regardless of your product or service. it has to be worth it to the prospect to talk to you even if they never become a client.
Briana Yarborough
More sales leaders than I would've ever expected, especially in founder-led organizations that sway the company in the latest and greatest direction, they think will make the company go viral overnight.
Tell me more about RevOps as an Executive Function. Sure, change is managed from the top-down and you have to have buy-in but how can we influence this sort of philosophy when we are not seeing C-level RevOps roles and the CRO has many other objectives and priorities that sometimes do not include RevOps at the top of that list?
And if this is not what you mean by RevOps as an Executive Function, please elaborate further!
Seb van Heyningen
You are right, Briana. Some founders think their products sell themselves and that once they show up to the market, people will beat their doors down. That's not often the case. It takes time, resources, and investment to get there.
James Tod
Our primary GTM is via Channel/Distribution and our ACV is ~£1,200. Due to this our Channel Sales Reps are often not involved in the deals and only know about them once the order is placed. How can CRM support them and their process that is primarily focussed on supporting their partners and training them on our offering?
Seb van Heyningen
Hey, James! That's one that many companies (including mine) are trying to figure out. You're not alone in that undertaking. I'd want to know more about how exactly your channel partners are selling your services, logistically. Outside of maintaining that personal touch, you can generate custom referral links for each partner to track how many opportunities they bring in, ask them what content they need to help close deals for you and build it for them, or even add them as guest users into your CRM and incentivize them to maintain clean data (that last one is the least realistic).
James Tod
Thanks Seb!
Tracking ops being brought in, maybe you can give feedback on this idea that we’re running with right now - Partners can purchase (by adding their customers) directly in our product. We’re currently implementing SFDC, integrated with our production database. The value being we will see in real time the growth within channel partners as ‘self serve’ along with the ops they need hand holding with (that will be logged as an Opportunity managed by their rep).
We’re mulling over giving partners CRM access (restricted of course!) and treating it as a Partner Management System so we have visibility of their pipelines, but maybe this would be too much and they wouldn’t actually use it!
Is there anyone in this group who works in a predominately Channel/Distribution environment? I’d love to pick your brains on how SalesOps support your channel teams if so!
Seb van Heyningen
Sounds like a great topic for a future AMA or Hangout, James. I am 100% certain there are people here that fit that description.
Briana Yarborough
And to add to my earlier question, we also rarely see anything above Director in RevOps! This is slowly changing but also a valid point to include…
Seb van Heyningen
We are definitely not there yet from a Leadership standpoint, but we have been there for years from the tech standpoint.
When I say that RevOps is an Executive function, I mean that every Executive decision MUST be filtered through the eyes of a RevOps professional. No matter what decision you make, it will impact the people, process, and technologies already in place at your company. RevOps provides that perspective.
A simple example:
A CRO wants to sell into a new market next quarter. RevOps can surface client data to validate if that's even a good idea. RevOps will find the data of this new target market. RevOps will update the CRM so that we can report on the success of this initiative. In some cases, RevOps will even help develop the product to better service this new market! So I guess what I'm saying is that CROs are already going through this whether they like it or not.
Briana Yarborough
I fully agree, we are the lifeline of the organization and our decisions hold insurmountable weight that could make or break the organization!
Seb van Heyningen
So why not just invite the RevOps leader into the strategy meetings since they will need to execute this strategy in the larger org and can tell you whether or not it will work with more accuracy than a strategic leader?
Briana Yarborough
YOU NAILED IT. I imagine things are a bit different for you now as a consultant. What recommendations would you have for others looking to go that route?
Seb van Heyningen
For me, the experience of working at another consultancy was invaluable. My first consulting gig was at Skaled. Looking back at myself then, I had no idea how to run a business. I had a decent network, but no one had any reason to trust me as a consultant other than my record as an SDR. The ability to focus on just one project at a time, start out in a junior role on an already staffed project, and learn from more experienced consultants are the reasons I was able to go out on my own. So my advice is to find a consultancy that is looking for talent in a field that you understand. And build from there.
If that's not an option for you, then start as a freelancer on Upwork or one of those similar sites. And dive DEEP into your network to find that first client. Consulting is all about trusting that the person you're bringing in knows what they're talking about. Your network of people that you have worked with is the best pool of people to start looking for gigs.
Briana Yarborough
As we explore RevOps and its importance, what would the perfect RevOps function look like in your opinion, and why would each aspect be critical to the performance of the organization and its ability to grow revenue?
Seb van Heyningen
The Perfect RevOps function 🤔 - I think that would be one where we have as close to real-time data on our buyer journey / revenue model as humanly possible. So that way the leaders of Marketing, Sales, and Success can come together and make nothing but informed decisions. I'd also add that our reps and individual contributors are all invested in and happy with the current process, because that's partially what gives us that real-time data. If you add to that an internal ticketing process that makes it easy to iterate and improve on systems....Well I don't think I have yet seen a RevOps function THAT perfect yet.
Briana Yarborough
I'm taking notes and definitely going to have some conversations with my team!!!
As we wind down on time, I want to thank you SO much for your time and sharing your wealth of knowledge. Very last question - is there any advice you'd like to give to people who haven't made the leap to RevOps yet or are coming from a siloed operations team, or maybe even want to get into consultancy themselves?
Seb van Heyningen
Yes! Hit me up. Please DM me. We are looking for consultants and have an overflow of demand at the moment 😉.
But aside from that, I am always happy to share my story, make connections to people in my network, etc. I think joining a group like this one is a great first step. There are a ton of awesome consultancies (Looking at you, THEIA, RevPartners, and Remotish) that might have openings too. 😊 This is a growing community and we're all here to help each other out.
Read the full AMA here 👉 RevOps through the Lens of a Former SDR
🗣 From the Community
#04_revops-questions - Revenue Leakage Causes
12/13/21: Hey all, doing some research about ways revenue might be leaking and was wondering if anyone had ideas outside of what I have found. Would love your insight! 1. Offering incorrect products, 2. Rogue discounting, 3. Lack of/improper upselling. Am I missing anything? Read 10 Replies.
#04_revops-questions - Cost of Sale Metric Breakdown
12/16/21: Cost of sale. Hate this metric because everyone does it differently, and no one actually wants to include all costs. But, we've got an investor who would marry this KPI if they could 🙄. So currently unpicking incomplete data to present an incomplete metric. Yay.
Gimme your thoughts to get me through this time of dire need: - Split by marketing and sales-generated sales, obviously. Split further by marketing channel or too granular? - Within sales-generated category, what's the bare minimum to include? I've got SDR salaries, AE salaries. What about cost of data? Cost of CRM? Manager salary? - Present as an average across the past 12 months, or do a calculation on the totals? (total sales YTD vs total costs). Read 12 Replies.
#08_tools-and-software - Outreach and Salesloft per seat license cost
12/14/21: Does anyone have a general per seat license cost for Outreach or SalesLoft? We may implement next year and would like to include it in our annual budget. Read 6 Replies.
#08_tools-and-software - Scaling a Marketing Stack
12/17/21: Hi All! Marketing stack question...We have a PLG motion and use Hubspot for CRM, Sales and Marketing for the benefit of a one stop shop, and syncing lots of product data to properties for sellers + customer journey segmentation. Our marketing contacts are growing at a rapid rate from organic traffic. I find Hubspot's contact pricing doesn't scale well with this model. Does anyone else experience this? Also, what's the recommended marketing stack to manage this at scale when the contact db is growing so fast? Read 8 Replies.
💬 Access the RevOps Co-op Slack group here to contribute to the conversation!
🐦 This week in #RevOps Social
For those of you scaling your teams! 😎
Well, THAT makes it so obvious. 🤯
You lookin’ at me? 👀
📅 Upcoming Events
Webinar: The Ultimate SaaS Commission Plan Masterclass - Tuesday, December 21 at 9am PT (12pm ET)
Come and learn the best practices in compensation for the most common SaaS GTM Roles - Account Executives, Presales Engineers, Sales Development Representatives, Customer Success Managers. Hosted by Siva Rajamani and Adith Krishnaswamy of Everstage.
Bi-weekly Product Led Revenue Peer Calls | Correlated
We're a group of revenue leaders who meet bi-weekly to talk all things PLG & PLG sales (product led revenue!).
📚 Your curated #RevOps reading list
Preparing to Move from Marketing to RevOps | Blake Kendrick
In a lot of cases, really competent, versatile marketing managers who manage a full stack of channels are already predisposed to be a good fit for the RevOps function. They have to learn how a lot of different channels work together and affect each other, they need to be technically competent in a number of different tools, and they need to prepare and organize data for taking in prospects upon conversion. They have to manage a lot of different responsibilities, just like a RevOps person will. But someone who's been tasked with managing one channel may be caught by surprise in terms of RevOps performance expectations and owned responsibilities. Let’s talk through some of that.
The data shows that the response rate from email marketing has fallen off a cliff, isn't it time to move away? | DLAignite
Last year, I wrote this article, on email marketing, which is based on the Hubspot data. What had driven me to this data was an article by The Drum, here, which stated. "According to Hubspot, the response rate to emails fell to a record low of 2.1% in April. Said differently, 98% of our efforts to reach new prospects failed. With conversion down, what did we do? You guessed it, we increased the number of emails sent during the same period by 50%..... We are playing a zero-sum game, and it’s literally a race to the bottom."
8 Crucial Elements For B2B Sales Team Growth | Momentum (a community partner)
Hyper-growth is a great problem to have for startups in enterprise sales. It means you’ve found product-market fit, your customers are getting ongoing value from your product, and your internal processes have held so far. But as the saying goes, ‘What got you here won’t get you there.’ After a certain threshold, hyper-growth breaks your internal processes and requires you to revisit them to minimize disruption and maximize success.
🎧 RevOps Podcasts
Why PLG RevOps teams need to work closely with Product: Sophia Francis, Director of RevOps at Dooly | Product Led Sales
Sophia Francis has worked across both Product-Led and Sales-Led SaaS companies. She came on the podcast to share about her learnings from leading Revenue Operations teams. Have a listen to learn:
How she prioritizes the various initiatives RevOps teams typically have on their plate
Why it is extra important for RevOps teams in PLG companies to collaborate closely with Product, and how to do this
The skills a PLG RevOps specialist should pick up to excel at their job
Working and living remotely even before COVID
Challenging the Status Quo with Nelson Gilliat, the Creator of the Buyer Centric Revenue Model | The Revenue Engine
Most B2B companies follow a standard selling motion of marketing-led demand generation, outbound prospecting by SDRs and sales, and sales reps on quota and commission. But could this structure be out-dated? The answer is “yes” per Nelson Gilliat, the creator of the Buyer Centric Revenue Model.
In this episode of The Revenue Engine Podcast, Nelson describes this new framework and challenges the Predictable Revenue Model. So grab your headphones and get ready to listen to a different - and somewhat controversial - perspective on how to drive the Revenue Engine.
How To Balance Your RevOps Tech Stack | The Revenue Architect Podcast
In this double-header episode of the Revenue Architect, Jeff takes a dive into two passions of his: tech stacks and RevOps. In a power-packed 10 minute episode he covers how their powers combine, specifically:
The 51 apps he's used in his career
Why avoiding tech can be a false economy
The temp-checks you need to take before investing in any tech
Why RevOps is so special
What you're missing out on if you don't use RevOps
And three tips from across his career to manage tech in the RevOps space
🔥 A few HOT #RevOps Jobs
Vice President of Finance | ORUM
VP, Revenue Operations | The Block
VP, Marketing | The Block
Director of Sales Enablement | CommercelQ
Senior Manager of Revenue Operations | Guidewheel
Revenue Enablement Manager | Guru
Marketing Operations Manager | CommercelQ
Commercial Operations Manager | Briq Bookings
Sales Systems Manager | Lively
Senior Salesforce Administrator | Loopio
Salesforce Administrator | Contentsquare
Sales Development Operations Lead | ORUM
Sales Analyst | Claroty
Sales & Partnerships Enablement Associate | Uberall
Sales Enablement Associate | Unity
🚒 Weekly RevOps Meme
Just remember. Before we were Ops professionals, we were professionals at OOPS.
Courtesy of Camela Thompson. ✌️
Funnel IQ is an operating system for your GTM team that provides end-to-end, full funnel analytics and insights that keep marketing, sales and customer success teams aligned and working seamlessly together to drive more revenue growth for your business.